This is the first of two volumes of the author's vigorous apprentice work, rescued from the pulps by a team of four editors. During the years covered here, 1947-1952, the author "would make a list of the magazines which might be interested and then send [the story] out again and again until it was sold or the list was exhausted. There were lots of magazines then. There was an open market for short fiction. There were lots of readers. Bless them!" [Author's Foreword]

The pulps included Detective Tales, New Detective, Doc Savage, and Dime Detective, among others.